Until the Eighties the regional character of Kenyan prose writing was far less marked than that of Zanzibari novels. Different was the situation in poetry; in fact, Kimvita and Kiamu have been used even in modern times (see, e.g., Ahmad Nassir Juma Bhalo, Abdilatif Abdalla and Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany; the last one is well-known for his endeavour in enriching and modernizing Swahili terminology, and a few of his proposed terms, e. g. runinga for `television`, have been accepted). Kenyan prose fiction, on the other hand, used to be much alike to the up-country Tanzanian literary production, written as it was in standard Swahili, sometimes with many colloquial features.

A book review of `Zanzibar: Kinyang`anyiro na utumwa´by Issa Nasser Issa AI-Ismaily (1999).

The aim of this article is to analyse allegories in the first four novels of the Swahili-writing author Euphrase Kezilahabi who is one of the most renowned authors in contemporary Tanzania. This analysis will be based on allegory as it is defined in literary studies. What is aimed at with this study is a hermeneutical interpretative approach to the allegories found in Kezilahabi`s early novels which shall be based on as much contexts as available: text-context, intertextual context, cultural context, historical context, only to mention the most important (cf. Mohlig 1994: 257). The text-context or co-text, however, is considered as the most reliable basis of such a study.

A mention of name in literature is almost always likely to recall the question Juliet posed to Romeo about his family name Montague in William Shakespeare´s Romeo and Juliet. In reading creative works we tend to identify characters basically by the names given to them. It is on this basic premise that some character analysis methods tend to define characters by taking recourse to their names and sometimes identifying them in metaphorical terms or as speaking names. Names play a very central and important role in any reading exercise and so would certainly the names given to characters be of importance to us. These are linguistic or semiotic signs that play a very crucial role in the overall linguistic structure of a literary text or its signification. Decoding of the names therefore becomes an important critical engagement in as far as it helps the reader in his deciphering of the text in which the names are. Characters´ names, as this article will show, can be used artistically to achieve a number of goals like encoding a central trait in a particular character´s signification, embracing crucial thematic motifs, ideological toning as well as even showing the particular writer´s point of view. Some of these qualities are easily lost in translation.

This study aims at studying one of the most important contemporary Kiswahili writers: Euphrase Kezilahabi. In a way this paper can be seen as a continuation of my earlier articles on the same writer. It is definitely different from the other ones though a certain thread links them: the interest in Kezilahabi`s philosophy. In this paper my interest is with two main motifs namely contemptus mundi and carpe diem. Contemptus mundi is a Latin expression for contemptible world, world as a bad place and one that is perceived contemptuously. I intend to explore the said motifs in Kezilahabi\'s prose works: Rosa Mistika, Kichwamaji, Gamba la Nyoka, Dunia Uwanja wa Fujo, Nagana and Mzingile. The latter two works are slightly short, lacking the novel length of the other four works. I do not, however, want to entangle myself in the polemics of genre as to what a novel or novella is. I will, however, regard the two as novellas at least by the virtue of their length.

Reading Mohamed´s novels Kiu (`Thirst´; 1972) and Nyota ya Rehema (`The Star ofRehema´or `The Destiny of Rehema´; 1976), one is struck by abundant use of `implication´ technique. Implication is regarded as a feature that is statistically more frequent in poetry than in prose, hence the presence of this technique in abundance in Mohamed´s idiom, renders it a quality of poetic prose. The purpose of this paper is therefore to show how various linguistic features are used as vehicle for the realisation of the implication technique used to create exponents for the semantic structure in his novels. Exponents as literary devices need not be implicit as in Mohamed`s idiom, however if used implicitly, they form an artistically engineered correlation with literary substance of the novel and gives it a certain quality that affects our `attitude´ and `judgement` towards it. Hence in this paper we hold it that the reader`s involvement in the interpretation of the novel eventually entails the decoding of the corpus for the externalisation of the literary substance. A reader who is fully involved in the interpretation and processing of implied meaning(s) in the novel, digs into its semantic structure by condation and deduction and comes out with more lasting impressions than he would if he were to deal with a less subtle or totally explicit idiom that may be regarded as plain and spoon-feeding.

Nyimbo, kama tanzu ya fasihi yeyote ile zina majukumu mbalimbali ambayo hutekeleza katika jamii. Lengo kuu la fasihi ni lile la kuielimisha na hata kuiburudisha jamii. Ndivyo ilivyo katika nyimbo kwa sababu kupitia kwazo wanajamii huburudika na kuelimishwa. Ni kwa sababu hiyo ndipo makala hii inalenga kuangalia nafasi ya nyimbo zinazopendwa katika fasihi ya Kiswahili. Huu ni utanzu ambao huwafikia watu wengi katika jamii. Kutokana na kutumia lugha ya Kiswahili, utanzu huu unaweza kueleweka na Wakenya wengi. Nchini Kenya, vyombo vya habari vimeipa fasihi hii nafasi kubwa sana na hivyo basi kuipanua hadhira yake. Hii ni kutokana na sababu kuwa fasihi hii inathaminiwa sana na wengi na ipewe nafasi kubwa katika vyombo vya habari hasa katika redio kwa muda mrefu. Ni kutokana na sababu hii ndipo tunajaribu kuonyesha nafasi yake katika fasihi ya Kiswahili.

Until the Eighties the regional character of Kenyan prose writing was far less marked than that of Zanzibari novels. Different was the situation in poetry; in fact, Kimvita and Kiamu have been used even in modern times (see, e.g., Ahmad Nassir Juma Bhalo, Abdilatif Abdalla and Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany; the last one is well-known for his endeavour in enriching and modernizing Swahili terminology, and a few of his proposed terms, e. g. runinga for `television`, have been accepted). Kenyan prose fiction, on the other hand, used to be much alike to the up-country Tanzanian literary production, written as it was in standard Swahili, sometimes with many colloquial features.

A book review of `Zanzibar: Kinyang`anyiro na utumwa´by Issa Nasser Issa AI-Ismaily (1999).

The Swahili novel, a literary genre lately appeared in Tanzania, has undoubtedly found a brilliant and mature expression in the works of the Zanzibarian writer Said Ahmed Mohamed. His novel Utengano, published in 1980, is a unique work in the Swahili literary production of the Seventies and Eighties, with regard to both the themes treated and the very elaborated style of the author, who has given a dense and homogeneous quality to this genre, which is by definition open and composite, totally different from the short story, the organisation of different elements representing a challenge to the capacities of a writer in terms of composition. In this paper I will focus on a feature of Utengano which, in my view, points out to the good achievement of a novel, namely the author`s utterance of a leitmotiv or general abstract idea creating cross-references and symbolic relations between the different levels of a literary text. The leitmotiv I found in Utengano is the idea of dynamism, in other words motion, energy that produces changes, which permeates the whole work unifying the different levels of expression. These latter will be analysed separately to allow a clear exposition, but the dialectical relationship between the `what` and the `how´ represents the key to the reading of this novel.